The Girlfriend Experience's Louisa Krause on Playing a Capitol Hill Escort

To find someone brave enough to play Anna Garner, a Capitol Hill plus-one-for-hire on season two of Starz’s The Girlfriend Experience, director Lodge Kerrigan knew he couldn’t sugarcoat the risqué material: “In the audition he said, ‘Feel free to mimic kissing or unbuttoning a blouse,’” recalls Louisa Krause, whom you may recognize as Malin Akerman’s tough-as-nails sister in Billions. Krause did him one better: “I kissed my arm instead. I was like, ‘I’m not going to fricking take a blouse down in the air.’ I’m all about committing fully.”

It’s kind of her specialty, actually. The 31-year-old actress first grabbed my attention four years ago, when she starred in The Flick, Annie Baker’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play about a tragic trio of movie theater ­ushers. I’ll never forget the way she stayed resolute during brutal, please-say-something stretches of silence. She never broke. But Girlfriend is different; this is sex—raw, graphic, pay-for-play sex. And Krause is down. “At the end of the day, the show is about humans,” she says. “The choices we make as humans, and then the consequences.” Read on for more from this up-for-anything human.

GLAMOUR: What I think is interesting about The Girlfriend Experience is how it toys with elements of not only gender but also sexuality and power. Was the way Anna turns her sexuality on and off discussed?

Louisa Krause: It wasn't outright explained to me. I watched the first season, and that gave me a flavor of the aesthetic. But I had never been in that kind of environment before. I love that [the show] is a non-judgmental look into a world that’s not shown.

GLAMOUR: If the sex is beside the point—if it's “a non-judgmental look into a world that’s not shown,” why do you think we need a device like paid-for sex to reveal that?

LK: The sex in The Girlfriend Experience season two directly reflects the complexity of a relationship that goes from a business transaction to something very real as well as the shifting power dynamics of control within that relationship. Love is a very complex emotion to realize on screen without some sort of physical manifestation. In GFE, in particular, that physical portrayal also shows the metamorphosis that takes place for Anna: from performing those acts in order to create the illusion of love for a client to actually experiencing the real thing.

GLAMOUR: Do you ever feel bad for her?

LK: Anna is an intelligent and confident business woman. I admire her choice to fall in love for the first time with someone she is intrigued by. It's brave to enter new emotional territory and be vulnerable. We all make choices. For me, it's more about: What is the outcome of those choices? And can we learn from the choices we make? She is a strong, self-serving individual who goes through a relationship that is very painful at times and comes out the other side resilient.

GLAMOUR: Who she falls in love with is a domineering GOP Super PAC finance director played by Anna Friel. Were you drawn to the idea that the content was political?

LK: I mean, I was aware. I was like, "Oh this is timely." But I just really love truth, especially when it's magnified. So when you get to see people in their homes, when they're not in whatever world they belong in, it's amazing what can be revealed.

GLAMOUR: You don't seem to get embarrassed very easily. Have you always been unflinching in that way?

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LK: What’s the point otherwise? I can’t half ass it. I just love humans, so that helps in my desire to resonate truth [when playing] different people. I just want to keep doing it for the rest of my life.

GLAMOUR: On the surface The Girlfriend Experience is about escorts, but it's actually almost like psychological warfare: These women lure their clients in and decide when to share, when not to. What goes through your mind when you're interacting with the material in that way?

LK: I actually came up with exactly who each client was to Anna, how long she'd had them as a client, even what books they'd given her. So that helps. But then, when you have a real connection with someone, you never know how it going to play out. In the story that we’re telling, I’m supposed to fall in love with somebody for the first time in my life. It’s the first time that Anna has shared her real self with anyone. It was miraculous to have an experience like that.